The End Of The Marriage

"Lying is done with words and also with silence."~Adrienne Rich

After the ninth grade, I transferred to another school. My dad insisted that I do it because, he said, it was a better school. I thought it was because he wanted to get me away from my friend. As much as I hate to admit it, he was right, it was a better school.

I made a couple of new friends after I'd been going there for a couple of months. We weren't particularly like one another, but then none of my friends had ever been very much like me. My home life was just the same as always. Dad still married to the girl, mom still sleeping with me. No furniture. By that time, I had devoted myself to school work because it meant I could phase out and forget how it felt to be living my life. I didn't want to be around my father or his wife. The smell of baby shit depressed the fuck out of me. Furthermore, if my father could see me, there was a good possibility he'd start harassing me. Occasionally, he'd make me hang out with him. I always wondered why. I assumed he was aware of how much I hated him. I don't know why I thought that; I did my dead level best to keep my feelings to myself. To this day, when i'm angry I frequently adopt a distant, preoccupied look. I was never aware of it until my therapist mentioned it.

By the time I was a junior, I had found a true friend. She was my english teacher. I met her because I wanted to be in the accelerated english program. I went to speak with her and she encouraged me to give it a try. I was also submitting poetry to the high school literary magazine she sponsored.

She came to give me safe haven when I couldn't stand my life anymore. She kept me alive when I was suicidal. She gave me hope. She loved me. The world was a little less lonely.

Somewhere before christmas of my senior year, my father's wife once again decided she'd had enough. She left and I believe she took her daughter with her. Somehow my father got her in his clutches and absconded with her. He finally had to acknowledge she was his child. Even though I already knew that, his admission just further enraged me.

My dad left the state with the child and went to see his mom. I don't recall how long he stayed there, but I'm sure it wasn't long enough, as far as I was concerned. I actually hoped never to see him again. Wrong again. He decided the coast was clear, apparently, and returned with his mother and child in tow to a small town not far away from where we lived. My mother started visiting him (brilliant, right?), but I refused.

At some point in that period of time, my father's wife, her brother and sister and maybe a couple of other people broke into our house in the middle of the night. They were fortunate that I was unable to get to the gun I knew was in the house. I was also fortunate because I might well have killed someone. We left the house and returned another day to find that all of my stuff had been taken. Since there wasn't much else in the house, they just decided to steal things from me.

I've always read a lot and kept those books which were meaningful to me for one reason or another. They took my books. Trust me, they did not take them to read them. No one in her family was bright enough to read them. My mom and I moved into a garage apartment.

Also about that time, my dad's wife and sister in law would show up at my school in the afternoons. I lived outside the area the school bus served, so I would wait for my mom till she got off of work. Walking out to my car, they would surround me and threaten me.

All of that ended when they figured out where my dad was. He was arrested and put in jail. My mother and i were required (by my father) to show up for his court date. I'm not sure what good that was supposed to do, but I didn't have any control over the situation, as usual. once again, I was humiliated by the circumstances in which I lived.

america held hostage day 1783

bushism of the day:
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee...that says, fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again."
website of the day:
The deCode Projecthttp://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/biotech/iceland/